The Kowalsky Gallery is proud to present MASHUPS, an exhibition curated by British artist Stuart Semple, who will tackle the concept of appropriation and the re-articulation of mass culture in his first curated group show in London.

Featuring 5 of the UK’s most fascinating young artists, this show is more than just a bright and glossy homage to pop, but an interesting insight into how a new generation make sense of the complexities of mass culture. Fittingly the private view will also feature a live performance and interactive music video shoot by Top 20 band, Subliminal Girls.

During exhibitions, the gallery also opens between 6pm – 9pm on the first Thursday of every month as part of Time Out First Thursdays. They will be hosted by the participating artists on the 5th August and 4th September.

“Any elements, no matter where they are taken from, can be used to make new combinations” -Guy Debord, Gil J Wolman (A users guide to Detournement)

From Stuart Semple:This generation is unique in as much as it's the last generation that will remember life before the home computer, mobile phone, music video, mass marketing and instant archive that is the Internet. The last generation that could recall such dramatic changes was that of my great grandparents who remembered life before the airplane, telephone and space travel.

In a way we are a generation of mutants, the flower power world of our parents with a new technology tacked on for a new world. The first wave of lab rats scavenging a landfill of cultural detritus. Far from feel-good nostalgia, I believe the artists in this show are creating Mash-ups from these found elements that result in works that tell us where we are in art, community and society.

They show us that far from being victim to the process we can use it to make our own narratives. This is increasingly important when global warming, terrorism and war proliferate the media, when we are lost between the graphic perfection of popular culture, fashion and fin de siecle anxieties.

Culturally I believe our ties have become electronic and the individual everything. Our experience can be personalized under a cloud of false choice. Community is replaced with MySpace, Facebook and what we watched last on youtube.com. Even the results of the football game or catchphrase from the latest comedy sketch show, which used to create a bond, are decaying faster and faster.

We are so bombarded and atomized that we no longer have the ability to navigate. When cultural product becomes waste almost at conception do we remember how to decode popular culture?The brands, logos, pop songs, celebrities and popular imagery that engulf us are corporately owned memes that can be changed within minutes of a boardroom finger snap.

“The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald'sThe most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald's.The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald's.Peking and Moscow don't have anything beautiful yet.”- Andy Warhol, (The Philosophy of Andy Warhol)

After the Second World War 'Pop artists' celebrated the blissful promise of the neon supermarket, shiny metal toasters, fast food and automobiles of the future. Since then the pace of consumer culture has gone into overdrive. Fluent with its elements, the artists in this exhibition understand how to re-mix them to create new meanings, navigate their atomized environments and redefine themselves.

“OUT OF THE RUINS OUT FROM THE WRECKAGE CAN`T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE THIS TIMEWE ARE THE CHILDREN THE LAST GENERATIONWE ARE THE ONES THEY LEFT BEHIND AND I WONDER WHEN WE ARE EVER GONNA CHANGE LIVING UNDER THE FEAR, TILL NOTHING ELSE REMAINS WE DON`T NEED ANOTHER HERO WE DON`T NEED TO KNOW THE WAY HOME”- Tina Turner (We don't need another hero)

‘Mash-Ups’ will be held at the Design and Artists Copyright Society’s Kowalsky Gallery. DACS is the UK's copyright society for artists and visual creators. Every year, DACS pays millions of pounds of royalties to artists and visual creators through its three services: Payback, Artist’s Resale Right and Copyright Licensing. The Kowalsky Gallery opened in autumn 2006 with an exhibition to celebrate the life and work of Elaine Kowalsky, the gallery’s namesake and one of DACS’ founding artists. It has continued an exciting and diverse exhibition programme that provides a platform for showcasing work by artists who use its services.

Nicky Carvell is currently studying at the Royal Academy of Arts Schools in London after graduating from Goldsmiths College in 2006. Extracting imagery from found 90’s posters which are of personal significance to her and processing these to the point of formal excess, her work may appear at first to be celebratory; however a darker side exists behind the vivid layers of colour. With the figure of the tragic hero at the forefront, issues of disenchantment, trauma and death are confronted. Consequently, morbid fascinations such as disembowelment and decay instigate works which crucify the idols she once invested in, whilst simultaneously immortalising them.

Adham Faramawy has exhibited, organised and performed in a multitude of warehouse and gallery shows internationally and in London and since graduating from The Slade School of Fine Art in 2004. These include a recent screening at Tate Modern, London, the new URA! space in Istanbul, and was included in ‘The Black Market’ group exhibition at Anna Kustera Gallery, New York. Using the medium of film, Adham express ideas concerning transmissions of knowledge, demonstrating fluid or floating identities. He creates his realities within physical sets and also the manipulation of postproduction.

Piers Secunda studied painting at the Chelsea College Of Art, London and the Surrey Institute Of Art, Farnham UK. Secunda has exhibited widely and is represented in various international and private collections, including the collection of Rachel Whiteread.Piers Secunda’s work has developed out of a desire to remove paint from its traditional support, in his words, to “as far as possible to separate the material from the restraints of the applied 2D surface.” Because this angle is under explored, this work has a look entirely of it’s own. It carries suggestions of assemblage, and can occasionally evoke the patina of empty billboards, their accumulations of torn posters. The paint Secunda uses is poured into sheets cans with moulds and often operates in the form of industrial fixtures with their own structural integrity.

Nathan James was born in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada in 1979 and currently lives and works in London. He studied at The Ontario College of Art and Design and McMaster University and has had exhibitions throughout North America and Europe, being recently featured in Scope London.

James presents a day-glow matrix that is the antithesis to the modern world envisioned in 1956 by Richard Hamilton, with his principal Pop work “Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?”. With these paintings James is inferring mass media materialism can indeed fulfill some of their promises of leisure and enjoyment, but at the cost of forfeiting some of the subjects' humanity. James uses a combination of techniques, including traditional painting, silk- screen printing, and stenciling to achieve his distinctive works. He finds inspiration from many sources, including trash TV, graphic design, vintage photography, popular magazines and his own passion for youth culture.

Stuart Semple currently lives and works in London and Dorset. His drawing, painting and printmaking re-articulates pop cultural elements into a personal universe of fear, isolation and nostalgia. His works balance a fabricated, mechanized perfection with an emotive painterly surface where symbols collide ambiguously. This deliberate ambiguous nature within the work neither celebrates nor criticizes popular culture, remaining autonomous in the recording of visual contemporary reality. Stuart Semple has exhibited worldwide in both solo and group exhibitions, has featured in biennale's in Mexico, Liverpool and Sao Paulo. He has also curated group exhibitions internationally. Semple's sincerity and willingness for sublimation within his work has placed him as one of the leading exponents in a new generation of pop artists.

Subliminal Girls are an indie top 20 chart act who address topics of popular culture with personal narratives and up to the second social observations. With the wry social commentary of Pulp and the dejected, baffled-wisdom charm of Art Brut, they aim to produce the perfect pop record with content more honest and darker whilst portraying their romanticised view of the world.

The Subliminal Girls contain ex and current members of The Art Goblins, Rhesus, Ciccone, Video Club, The Welsh Elephant, Guarana, Future and the Boy and Dizzy Moth, Low Fat Custard, Bridport Daggers, Crissi Cromer All Stars and have recently supported acts including The Bravery, Jamie T, The Rumblestrips, Art Brut and Babyshambles.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Art of England Magazine - November Column

Stuart's column for Art of England magazine, published in November. New issues available from all good newsagents!

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All the fun of the fair.- By Stuart Semple

Isle upon isle of contemporary art is stretched out before me. Familiar faces fluttering in and out of gallery booths littering the fair like doorways in a corridor from the shining. Desperate dealers rubbing their hands together as another token contemporary mascot gets sent for bubble wrapping before being swapped for the unsold wares from the makeshift back rooms. No, this isn’t just the Frieze art fair, it more than that. This October London was literally a city of fairs.

I feel it’s time to lay some rumours to rest, I’m about as far from a party animal as you can get, preferring a retro dvd like ‘Lovejoy’ or ‘Poirot’ to a night on the tiles. In fact treacle tart and custard is my poison of choice these days. (Any donations gratefully received courtesy of the Art of England offices) I don’t have much hair to let down, but if I could I’d save it for Frieze week.

It’s wonderful that the world turns to London once a year to talk about contemporary art, but what I find slightly sad is the general public’s insatiable appetite for the art market, rather than art work. Wonderful though the fairs have been, Frieze has without a doubt taken the heat away from the work. In the old days people would get on a plane to see a museum exhibit. These days it’s to see Jake and Dinos Chapman doodle on a twenty quid note, and gossip about how much the Gagosian stand has shifted. Interestingly for the first year Frieze didn’t issue a statement on sales volume, which was followed by the auction houses. Still Frieze is a spectacle, celebrities clogging up the isles. I couldn’t see the Julien Opie’s for Lilly Allen’s, Naomi Campbell’s and princess Michael’s.

This year, I didn’t get to party like I normally do. I had my own show to contend with. It turned out to be a mammoth project, it was spiraling into disaster. As the doors flew open at the fairs, I was up most of the night with Paul and David Hancock trying to hang 20 foot by 10 foot billboards in mid air.

On the Tuesday night I popped next door, to ‘The Future Can Wait’. An absolutely gorgeously curated show of new British art talent. Tessa Farmer showed some of her tree root and fly pieces, minutely sculpted to show the animal kingdom attacking that of the human realm. I have a new hero of paint, and that’s Gavin Nolan. His haunting portraits have burned into my mind. I can still see them now. David Hancock put in a couple of his newer pieces and John Stark showed a couple of things I’ve not seen before. He just seems to get better and better, but sadly as he does so, it’s becoming almost impossible to get one for love or money. It had a great time as everyone was there, even my artist friends from out of town. It was especially lovely to see Boo Saville and Adham Faramawy, who I collaborated with on a project in New York. Both looking fabulous.

Adham Faramawy & Boo Saville, at 'The Future Can Wait'

By Sunday, I needed a rest. One of my favourite fairs has always been zoo. Change from a tenner and you get to see the elephants for free! Amazing! It used to be held at London Zoo, with all the younger galleries showing their wares. Quite often a fascinating hunting ground for new talent, and very open minded and talkative dealers. This year was different, they’d moved into the the Royal Academy. Although there were some amazing pieces, notably for me, Dave Risley’s booth, there was a sense that it was trying to be Frieze, that it had lost it’s own identity in the move. There was an air of pretension that upset me.

During Frieze every artist or gallery tries to make as much noise as possible. Take for instance Richard Prince’s piece, featuring a bikini-clad vixen in hot pants and a car that looked like it was from the new Tarantino movie ‘Death Proof’. Is it pure promotion or art? You decide. Whatever, it was entertaining.

Gallerist, Anna Kustera (who I did a show with in NYC in September) was in town so I took her on a whistle stop tour of Vyner St and some of the East End spaces. The Lucifer Effect at Primo Alonso, curated by Gordon Cheung was absolutely wonderful as was a show of Zac Smith’s drawings at Fred. He’s amazing, a Goth porn star who draws his co-stars. I wanted to buy some, only to be told that it was ‘museums first’ and that Saatchi had already snapped up most of them. Delicate, poetic, narrative mark making at it’s best. There was a humour and I loved the materials too. I guess I’ll have to wait before one graces my living room.

I have to give a quick mention to the new Dylan bio pic. Kate Blanchett was wonderful as Bob, the movie was perfect. I was thrilled to be at the preview and to hear Todd Haynes, talk about how he approached such a difficult task. I loved his non-literal translation of one of my favourite stories in rock history. I loved his movie ‘Velvet Goldmine’. It became something that shaped my youth, so it was a shame that I was the only one in the audience sporting some glitter! Anyway, I recommend you see the movie. You won’t be disappointed.

Art may be about the market. The press may like to speculate, they may like big numbers. Celebrities do guarantee coverage, but there’s some amazing stuff out there if you’re brave enough to look. I guess I’ll be enjoying an early night until this time next year. Lovejoy anyone?